Recently, someone in the neighborhood watchgroup called whoever it was that cut the cord on his Christmas lights a “Grinch.” For us, the Grinch was in the form of the cable company. Apparently, we had an old fee that my husband was not aware of (he pays the cable bill so he is pretty much in charge of what’s up with the cable account). And instead of sending a reminder, instead of posting one of those little red shut-off notices on our doorknob, they cut both our cable and Internet. That was their delightful way of wishing us a Merry Christmas.
I was pretty upset over that. The BIG thing that bothered me was that they did it without warning. It was, like, BOOM! Internet and cable gone all of a sudden.
But I was just glad I had taken care of what I needed to do on the Internet that day before it happened. The kids, however, had not yet had a chance to do anything on the Internet that day, because they were in school. Then they had to come home and find out there was no cable and no Internet. What a crummy way for them to start Winter Break!
I have a picture on my phone of a dog sticking out its tongue and at the bottom it says “Meanie head.” I wished I could’ve sent that picture to the cable company. But I was tempted to storm into the office and scream at them after Jesse saw for himself he could not get access to his Internet game site and started to cry. I wanted to yell at them. “I hope you’re happy! You made my little boy cry!”
You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
But fortunately, we are well-stocked in DVDs, so of course we were able to watch movies instead. One movie was Hugo. I remember when Jen finished reading that book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, she encouraged me to read it too. It’s one of the books I have read in a day. It is a really good book and the movie is good, too. We watched it twice! Love that movie! (It’s not often we see a movie based on the book and end up loving both the book and the movie. For me, White Oleander comes to mind. Jen and I agree both the book and the movie for The Book Thief were also good.)
Also fortunately, the project Jennifer has been working on for days does not require Internet to finish. So she was still able to work on her project. (I don’t know what it is because it’s Top Secret. It’s something she is making for me for Christmas.) Also, one of Jen’s best friend’s had a sleepover here this weekend, so they mostly spent time hanging out and doing “sleepover stuff.” They also watched a movie on a portable DVD player.
And at least I have the Google, Gmail and Facebook/Messenger apps on my phone. So I was still able to have access to them. As well as Pinterest and Twitter (though I can’t see the profile changes Pinterest has made. I have to log in at the computer to see it, so I don’t know yet what is up with that). The thing of it is, though, that I HATE typing on the tiny keys on my phone, so I kept things brief and tried to avoid answering emails that were going to have lengthy answers or include links.
Some other good things came out of this experience. We have a lot of board games that were available for us to play. And we also have A LOT of books. In fact, Jesse has a stack of books from the library he still needed to read, so he tackled those over the weekend. He read 2 of them. I also did a lot of reading. In fact, I read 100 pages of an ARC of a new sci-fi novel that came out on December 1st that I am reviewing for Night Owl Reviews. I don’t normally read ARC’s of books, but I love to read sci-fi, and this one sounded like a good story. I was right, too: The novel is REALLY GOOD!! (Now I’m beginning to think I should not pass up on reading ARC’s anymore, because I’d miss out on a good story!)
Aside from reading, Jesse was still able to play games on the computer. (That is mostly all he does on the computer: He plays games. For Internet, he plays ROBLOX and Animal Jam.) He played GTA but he also learned how to play Solitaire. I actually had to reintroduce myself to playing Solitaire because I have not played that game for so long. I’d forgotten how addictive it is! Jesse saw me playing it and wanted to check it out. So I taught Jesse how to play Solitaire. He needed some coaching as he played but pretty soon he got the hang of it. He got really excited when he won.
I also spent some time organizing my files on the computer, updating stuff, and clearing out pictures on my phone to free up storage space.
So, yeah, our cable/Internet got cut out of the blue, but we survived. And I’m glad the cable is on in time for us to see the Doctor Who Christmas episode.
I have a love/hate relationship with the cable company. I love what they offer us, but I HATE their inflated prices and sucky customer service. We actually plan to use an alternative source of cable in the near future, though we DO still need Internet. And it kinda sucked that they just cut us off like that. Not cool to do it without warning! But we got through it. They tried to knock us off our feet with that proverbial punch in the gut, but we got back up, dusted ourselves off, and STILL managed to have a good weekend anyway!
And I have come across stories from people who the Grinch has also visited, too. Some instances are much worse than ours and I’m glad ours only involved something minor like this. My heart and prayers go out to the people I know who are faring much worse.
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